The effect of positive events at work on after-work fatigue: they matter most in face of adversity

There is evidence that daily negative events at work enhance fatigue. In contrast, positive events may trigger processes that increase, but also processes that decrease, energetic resources. Accordingly, results regarding a main effect of positive events on fatigue have been mixed. However, a clearer pattern between positive events and fatigue can be expected under adverse circumstances (i.e., accumulation of negative events, high chronic stressors). Positive events may facilitate coping and accelerate recovery processes and, thus, reduce resource drain due to daily negative events and chronic stressors. Predicting fatigue in a diary study with 76 employees, we investigated interactions between daily positive events and (a) daily negative events and (b) chronic social stressors. Multilevel modeling revealed that negative but not positive events were associated with increased end-of-work fatigue. However, positive events interacted with negative events and with chronic social stressors. As expected, positive events were negatively associated with fatigue only on days with many negative events, but not so on days with few negative events. Analogously, positive events were negatively associated with fatigue only among employees with high, compared with low, chronic social stressors. We conclude that the beneficial short-term effects of positive events on energetic resources are largely confined to adverse circumstances.     

Memory training and strategy use in older adults: results from the ACTIVE study

Little is known about the long-term effects of memory training in later life on strategy use. Data from the Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly (ACTIVE) study (n = 1,401) were used to describe strategy use in a community-dwelling sample of older adults. Strategy clustering scores on verbal list learning tasks of episodic memory were used to test the impact of memory training on strategy use and study longitudinal associations between strategy clustering, memory performance, and everyday functioning. Results suggested that younger, female, white, healthier, and more educated participants show higher strategy clustering scores initially but no characteristics were consistently associated with different trajectories in strategy clustering across all strategy clustering measures together. Memory training had significant immediate effects on all measures of strategy use that were maintained through five years of follow-up. With respect to longitudinal mediation, pre-post training changes in most strategy clustering scores mediate changes in objective memory performance and everyday functioning, implying that strategies can be modified and are closely related to both memory ability and the ability to function independently. This study provides evidence that older adults can be trained to use cognitive strategies, the effects are durable, and strategies are associated with memory and everyday functioning.     

Impairments of speech fluency in Lewy body spectrum disorder

Few studies have examined connected speech in demented and non-demented patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). We assessed the speech production of 35 patients with Lewy body spectrum disorder (LBSD), including non-demented PD patients, patients with PD dementia (PDD), and patients with dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), in a semi-structured narrative speech sample in order to characterize impairments of speech fluency and to determine the factors contributing to reduced speech fluency in these patients. Both demented and non-demented PD patients exhibited reduced speech fluency, characterized by reduced overall speech rate and long pauses between sentences. Reduced speech rate in LBSD correlated with measures of between-utterance pauses, executive functioning, and grammatical comprehension. Regression analyses related non-fluent speech, grammatical difficulty, and executive difficulty to atrophy in frontal brain regions. These findings indicate that multiple factors contribute to slowed speech in LBSD, and this is mediated in part by disease in frontal brain regions.     

Loading mobile phones in a multi-option society

As mobile phone saturation increases, operators find it harder and harder to differentiate themselves in the marketplace. Telecommunications companies have had to develop strategies as quickly as the industry has developed, and in recent years have found themselves increasingly moving away from their core market of voice service provision to becoming anything from fashion brands to putative multimedia companies. From the consumer's perspective, Peter Gross and Stefan Bertschi discuss how a customer navigates such a 'multi-option' society. Bewildered by choices--not just in service level and provision but in the way these products are coded with brands that suggest identities and cultural behaviour--how is a consumer to relate to such a plurality of options?     

Knowing what you're feeling and knowing what to do about it: Mapping the relation between emotion differentiation and emotion regulation

Individuals differ considerably in their emotion experience. Some experience emotions in a highly differentiated manner, clearly distinguishing among a variety of negative and positive discrete emotions. Others experience emotions in a relatively undifferentiated manner, treating a range of like-valence terms as interchangeable. Drawing on self-regulation theory, we hypothesised that individuals with highly differentiated emotion experience should be better able to regulate emotions than individuals with poorly differentiated emotion experience. In particular, we hypothesised that emotion differentiation and emotion regulation would be positively related in the context of intense negative emotions, where the press for emotion regulation is generally greatest. To test this hypothesis, participants' negative and positive emotion differentiation was assessed using a 14-day diary protocol. Participants' regulation of negative and positive emotions was assessed using laboratory measures. As predicted, negative emotion differentiation was positively related to the frequency of negative emotion regulation, particularly at higher levels of emotional intensity.